Beaty, an award-winning actor from New York, helped lead the collaboration over the past year.

The project began by people sharing stories. Later, a script allowed actors to assume roles and present interpretations on stage.

"They were very engaged," Omaha resident and performer Cynthia Stubblefield said of their initial performances at Omaha's Rose Theatre. "They really took part in the story. They were able to become the story and not just be there."

The power of the project led Beaty to welcome some monologues from the play on stage at the Holland Performing Arts Center ahead of his performance of his own play.

"If you've not been directly impacted, it might be hard to understand the complexity of the issues that are involved and it might be harder to understand in a really deep way that this is somebody's mother, that this is somebody's child, this is someone's loved one," Beaty said.

He aims to create purpose from some of that pain felt within the Omaha community.

After being part of the production himself, Stubblefield's son Shamall Fleming said, "I look at it like, I need to change the community, but by people listening to these stories it changes a lot of lives."

A locally produced documentary about the entire process will debut at Film Streams in October.